Drivers, who are passionate smokers, do not want to give up their cigarette during driving. Typically, such a driver will hold the steering wheel with the one hand and search with the other hand for the cigarette pack. During this searching the attention of the driver is only partly directed to the road and the current traffic situation, while the remainder of his attention is directed to the search for the cigarette and its removal from the package. During a suddenly occurring critical traffic situation the driver thus only has available one hand and half of his attention. Therefore it is no surprise that, according to traffic statistics, very many accidents are due to the fact that the driver of a vehicle during the moment of the accident was distracted due to searching for a cigarette.
After the driver has found a cigarette, then his attention is directed to finding the electric cigarette lighter and then to guiding the lighter to the cigarette which is in the mouth. The driver's attention is totally committed if, as occasionally happens during lighting, embers fall from the cigarette onto the clothing of the driver, or onto the vehicle seat or floor and the driver is then busy trying to put out the embers. If the driver could receive a lit cigarette, then this would additionally contribute to a great degree to the safety of the driver.
German Offenlegungsschrift No. 28 42 193 discloses a cigarette dispenser with an electric lighter, which has a drum magazine with a chute-shaped storage, on the underside of which is provided a drum which is rotatable about a horizontal axis and has longitudinal grooves for receiving one cigarette each. A trough is provided under the drum. By rotation of the drum with a handle which is mounted from outside on the housing, a cigarette falls into the trough and thereby comes to lie next to the hot bulb of the lighter. The dispenser opening is provided at the end of the trough which lies opposite the hot bulb, from which dispenser opening the cigarette is pulled horizontally.
That conventional cigarette dispenser has the disadvantage that the cigarettes must be placed individually into the drum magazine, which is very timeconsuming. Also the trough or the dispenser opening lies below the housing, so that the capability for allowing gripping the cigarette for removal from the dispenser opening leaves much to be desired. Furthermore sufficient contact is not assured between the cigarette which lies in the trough and the hot bulb at the end of the trough. Furthermore the conventional cigarette dispenser is difficult to install in the dashboard of a motor vehicle due to its relatively great height.
A further cigarette dispenser which is known from German Offenlegungsschrift No. 30 31 436 is distinguished by an expensive mechanism for lighting and putting out cigarettes. The same is true for a cigarette dispenser which is known from German Offenlegungsschrift No. 28 12 457, which in addition also needs an electric motor.
A basic purpose of the present invention is to provide a cigarette dispenser with electric starter, in particular for motor vehicles, which permits with a simple mechanism a safe lighting and a good capability for gripping of the lit cigarette.